With more than 520 million photos to explore, Webshots is one of the largest photo- and video-sharing sites, allowing its members to upload personal photos and videos into albums via the Webshots Desktop or Web interface and then share them with their friends and family.
The website requires an account so you can upload and share photos with other users and create your own online photo library. The images you upload will be converted to little-known formats as follows: WBC (Webshots collections), WBZ (downloaded Webshots pictures), WB1 and WBD (Webshots pictures).
However, many of us want to not only view the photos of other users, but actually copy them in an accessible format on our desktop computers or laptops. The only way you can do that is by either being a friend of the author or converting them using this simple application. There aren’t many products on the market that can convert this type of files and the fact that Ultimate Webshots Converter is freeware really comes in handy.
First of all, the interface is simple and intuitive. Three menus will guide you through the complete process of converting your favorite Webshots pictures into the already known JPEG files and will also allow you to view your stored images in the aforementioned little-known Webshots formats.
In order to view your Webshots pictures using something else besides your Webshots desktop application you can access the Open option from the File menu, which will enable you to browse to the folder where you have stored the Webshots images and open the desired one. The View window will provide you not only with the preview of the selected image but also with additional information about it (title, credits, category, id, size, daily date, etc.).
Under the image preview you will notice 3 buttons: save, fit to window and real size; you can display the image to its real dimensions by using the real size button or fully preview it by pushing the fit to window one. From this window you can also save the file into JPEG just by pressing Save and selecting a path and name for the new file.
If you have many photos to convert, Ultimate Webshots Converter provides you with the optimum solution for this problem – Batch Conversion, which you can access easily by using the Conversion menu. In the Batch Conversion window, by using the +Folder and +File buttons you can add to the batch the desired files or folders that contain Webshots images or simply drag and drop the files you wish to convert.
Another thing that should not be ignored is the presence of the -File and Clear buttons, which will help you remove the unwanted images or clear the entire batch. Here you can also select the destination folder on your hard drive or choose to save the converted images to the same folder where the original files are located.
You can even select an action that the application will perform when moving files to the desired location, and in this regard the program provides three moving options: it allows you to put the files into the root of the folder, create a folder for each Webshots collection (WBC), or sort files according to their original categories. Furthermore, you will be able to customize the action that will be taken by using a built-in expression editor that comes with a help file for better understanding of the available expressions.
The Batch window also has a settings drop-down menu that comes with three options: keep the original filename, give the processed files the name of the picture or give the converted files the ID of the picture. It also has a customizable expression editor like the one from the destination folder, where you can select the variables you want your files to display.
Another useful feature that comes in handy is the possibility to select the action to be taken if the converted file already exists. Again, you have three options to work with: you can either skip, overwrite or rename the duplicate files that are found in the conversion process, which is done automatically, you just need to select the option that suites you best.
After all the settings are done the only thing you have to do is press the Let's Convert! button in order to start the conversion of the selected Webshots files. While the conversion takes place the application displays a progress bar and a log of all the operations that ensue from the start till the end of the conversion. A good addition to the whole process would be a time estimation feature to view the remaining time until it is completed.
The last menu of Ultimate Webshots Converter is Options, which is not something to forget about. It features the language selection window where you can select your native language if the application supports it or return to the default English if it suites you best.
The quality of the converted images is good but the lack of control over the conversion process doesn't leave you too many options to work with. However, for a free application the software does its job well.
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For those who are looking for more than viewing their Webshots pictures in an uncomfortable format and want to make an archive accessible to all image viewer programs, Ultimate Webshots Converter is the tool to use.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action: